5-ish years ago after doing an internet search of "not interested in having sex" after my feelings of alienation of not relating to my peers talking about sex and some of them expressing/experiencing sexual frustration reached its tipping point...I felt like I needed some closure, so I went on a search. I got frustrated at seeing many links and articles that equated that genuine disinterest to a dysfunction that must be addressed by a therapist. I wasn't unhappy because of my disinterest in sex, so I ruled out dysfunction.

One link then lead to another, and then eventually to asexuality and AVEN. I didn't join until June 2012, though.

For years I'd thought of myself as pretty much the closest thing to neuter that I'd ever met. I was in college when I started having behavioral problems, and one of my professors suggested maybe there was something I wasn't dealing with. I thought about it for a little bit, but it was pretty clear the problem was with sex...so I got on Google and searched. I don't remember whether I looked for "asexual" or "not interested in sex", but I ended up on AVEN, and the more I read the more I recognized what other people were reporting. I didn't join for a while because I was a little uncomfortable with being on a forum.

Don't you wish you could escape a gas-filled death trap by cutting through the door with a welding torch you happen to have tucked in your belt, while breathing through a candy thermometer?

Pretty much the same story. In school, around 5th and 6th grade, kids started talking about sex. I knew the basic mechanics of it, but it wasn't any sort of interest to me. I didn't have any kind of drive for it. I was curious about it, as kids typically are, but I really wanted a relationship. I wanted to hang out with one girl in particular, talk to her, give her gifts, cuddle with her and make her happy. It was on one vacation or another that I condensed the concept to myself, around 6th grade. I asked myself "If I could choose to be with her as a companion, or have sex with her, which would it be?" This question arose from the typical actions of my classmates, where the males whispered about the sex rumors they had heard, like how to masturbate or how vaginas worked, and the girls would act disgusted, so my conclusion was that the girls didn't particularly care about sex. Given myself the ultimatum, I decided that I didn't really care about sex and simply wanted to BE with that girl.

It took a while to realize that this was a relatively abnormal trait, but it was the first time I had actually thought about what sex meant to me and came to a realization.

In middle school, I thought that I was bisexual, because I felt the same level of attraction for boys and girls. I felt no attraction.... nil, zilch. Wikipedia and AVEN assured me that's not what "bisexual" means.

I had heard asexual used as a joke in high school, and in fact my friends used to joke that I was but it didn't occur to me that it was a real thing until I was in my twenties, then I broke down and cried to my best friend that I really was asexual and she found me AVEN. Funny how it always seems to come back to that

I had known of the term asexual for a long time, just seemed to be one of those obvious terms along with heterosexuality and homosexuality. Except I never really looked into it or identified with it. I had assumed that an asexual was someone who was never aroused and wasn't interested in having relationships with anyone. So I assumed that I wasn't that, because I had become aroused by things (like movies) despite it being really low, and I also had crushes on people. I assumed that the fact that I never wanted to have sex with anyone and I disliked it, was something that I was "wrong" with me and I had to get psychological help for. Looking into it more, I now see that one can be asexual while also wanting purely romantic relationships, and also can get aroused by stimuli at times. I felt so relieved looking into it more and coming across AVEN. I realize now that there is a scale for asexuality.

I discovered asexuality quite coincidentally. First I read in some newspaper the question of some guy asking about a love issue and the answer mentioned asexuality: There are people living in a relationship without sex and are happy. However, I didn't connect this to me back then.

A few weeks later I had a discussion with the guy I had a crush on (and hoped to become my boyfriend) and we briefly talked about asexuality. The very same evening he friendzoned me (this had nothing to do with our discussion). I was disappointed and sad but I also realised that almost nothing would change between us. The only difference now was we weren't going to bed and I was actually relieved. This reaction made me wonder. I remembered our brief discussion about asexuality where I mentioned what I read in the newspaper and for the first time I asked myself whether I might be asexual.

The rest was a google search for asexuality and here I am. I'm really glad I found out about asexuality. I really don't want to imagine going back to when I thought I'm a very late bloomer, frigid, a freak or whatnot. It disturbs me a little that I found out about asexuality by pure coincidence, seeing how much has changed for me by now.